The Hardware-Exception, The Pain-Ray, and The Knock-Down Blow
There's a time when something says to you, in no uncertain terms, "I'm hurt. Stop." You don't have to stop, but that's almost always what comes next if you don't: you stop, whether you like it or not. And then, something bad may happen.
Today I took the blow that would have ended the fight. I tried for a moment to stay standing, but the vessels and nerves that push and pull the muscles were overwhelmed with something else, something made of the usual stuff of sensory impulses, but bigger, and much more powerful. Some things that are wholly identical fail to make an impression unless they're big enough. Mountains inspire awe, but stray rocks don't. Oceans inspire awe, but puddles don't. Breezes are pleasant, but hurricanes are awful. Curiously, I said to someone last night, "One very important measure of a person is whether they see what's great in what's small and treat it with respect, or whether they simply disrespect it and trifle with it because they can." Even the actions of the sense are like this. You're all but oblivious to the sensation of your hand on table, the cup, or the keyboard, but you shout and curse and throw down your work when you hit your finger with a hammer. Sometimes, I have to admit, the fact that I can feel anything at all terrifies me.
That's not to say that I want to get rid of it. The information is there for a reason.
All information is here for a reason.
So maybe it was good placement of the strike, or maybe it was the fact that I happened to be inhaling at the moment it landed, or maybe it was just that forceful, but that was the moment when there was no more control running over my wires, no more fight, no more fog or clarity, just the feeling of being hurt. I fell on one knee and made an awful noise. Kung fu is one of the few contexts in which I feel like I can utter awful vocalizations without a breach of social protocol, or making people think that I'm weirder than they already do.
As somebody held my hands up in the air so my diaphragm could properly expand my lungs again, all I could do was grin and say "That was one hell of a hit."
Which it was.
There's a constant stream of sense flowing through every moment. It all has a certain smoothness and synchrony. But pain that stops you is different. It's asynchronous. Everything suddenly halts. Everything else is suddenly interrupted. Computer scientists might call this an exception, meaning the appearance of a condition somehow different than the usual behavior of the machine, and requiring special attention. A program "throws an exception," just like a fist throws a punch. Hopefully, if things are well-written, there is something there to catch it. We're accustomed to walking around, standing, sitting. When something knocks you down, though, you have to do something different.
I really like the phrase "to throw an exception."
"Boy, you really threw him for an exception."
Sometimes it's important that everything stops.
I often think about those moments when we don't get to make choices, no matter how well-prepared or quick or ready we are. We spend so much time worrying about what we should think or what we should do, but sometimes something pushes us aside or pulls us in, and leaves us no choices, nor even any thoughts.
Sometimes things happen.
Very curiously, I observed an mixed-martial arts cage match broadcast on a major network in a prime-time slot. It should be said that this sport produces tremendous athletes and excellent fighters; their effectiveness can't be disputed. Still, something is missing. Two people enter a ring and beat the crap out of one another until one of them can't do it anymore. And then what do you have? What does anyone have? Commercials roll, and everyone changes the channel. Power is a funny thing. To be worthwhile, it has to be used. In being used, it is used up. When it's used up, you're back where you started. The fight I saw went on for what couldn't have been more than 90 seconds. After all the music and the fireworks and the dramatic biographies of the fighters, it came down to one of them taking bad hit on the knock-out point on the jaw, and falling down. And then it was done. There was such a painful look of despair in his eyes as they lifted him up off the floor. He had certainly trained for years to learn his skill, and must have worked for months to develop his physical condition. Then it was over. One won, and the other lost, even though they both did exactly the same thing. It seems strangely like struggling over who gets to be the object, and who gets to be the reflection. The undertaking is just a mirror.
Apparently, the Department of Defense has also finally perfected its electromagnetic pain-ray. The experts on television marched out vivid demonstrations of real people marching forward in real-time only to be suddenly and violently stopped and pushed back by some silent, invisible, pain-inflicting force. Their limbs flailed, they grimaced and gasped in agony. But there was nothing heard, nothing seen. Suddenly, they just stopped, and flailed, and screamed, and tried to get away. It was truly eerie. Everything suddenly stops, and everyone suddenly feels pain. The device was simply called the "Active Denial System." I suppose the reasoning behind the strategy is incredibly logical and succinct: pain deters people. It stops what they're doing.
Today I feel oddly like I am stuck in that moment of no thought and no choice. My actions feel oddly like involuntary flailing in blind sea of burning nerve ends. I am just gasping and making awful noises. They say, "all things are burning," and deep in my heart I believe it.
So, strangely, I feel very alive. You don't see the milliamperes that run over a copper wire, but a lightning bolt blinds everyone who's looking. There are small signals, and then there are huge forces. But the two are not different. Its only our sense of our own scale that separates them.
"You think you're so big."
I don't know what story I'm telling lately, or why, or to who. I only know that it's mine, and I feel unaccountably like telling. It's full of awful noises and unaccounted gestures flailing through the matters of fact, involuntarily, clumsily, with no apparent purpose.
It rained yesterday, so hard that the streets filled up with half-an-inch of water. My shoes were still wet today. One letter on the construction sign posted ahead of the roadwork on State-763 had ceased function and so the sign was flashing, "RAD WORK AHEAD -- SEED LIMIT STRICTLY ENFORCED." My twenty-sixth birthday is in two weeks and two days. I really like cartoons. One of my shoelaces is about to break.
Facts like that. It's almost embarrassing or untoward. But I keep finding myself here.
I'm perplexed at how my thoughts can be filled up with so many large principles and overarching truths but I can still be so perplexed and uncertain about so many things. I used to think that this was simply a temporary phase, a sign of incompleteness, an uncorrected fault. Suddenly I find myself thinking that we're all certain about things, and we're all uncertain about things, and this is just how it will be, no matter how much time passes, or how much I learn. Or how much anyone learns.
Everything is bright and clear, even as the sun goes down. I keep seeing rainbows in the thin clouds going by. I keep thinking of that place outside of thought, or choice, and those sunsets and those rainbows feel vividly, brilliantly akin to being punched in the base of the lungs. There's thoughts to think, and choices to make, but somehow what I'm seeing is outside of all of that.
And I keep thinking, that we must all hurt. And I keep thinking that compassion is only the willingness to feel pain. And I keep thinking that wisdom is only the knowledge of when to stop what you're doing.
Today I took the blow that would have ended the fight. I tried for a moment to stay standing, but the vessels and nerves that push and pull the muscles were overwhelmed with something else, something made of the usual stuff of sensory impulses, but bigger, and much more powerful. Some things that are wholly identical fail to make an impression unless they're big enough. Mountains inspire awe, but stray rocks don't. Oceans inspire awe, but puddles don't. Breezes are pleasant, but hurricanes are awful. Curiously, I said to someone last night, "One very important measure of a person is whether they see what's great in what's small and treat it with respect, or whether they simply disrespect it and trifle with it because they can." Even the actions of the sense are like this. You're all but oblivious to the sensation of your hand on table, the cup, or the keyboard, but you shout and curse and throw down your work when you hit your finger with a hammer. Sometimes, I have to admit, the fact that I can feel anything at all terrifies me.
That's not to say that I want to get rid of it. The information is there for a reason.
All information is here for a reason.
So maybe it was good placement of the strike, or maybe it was the fact that I happened to be inhaling at the moment it landed, or maybe it was just that forceful, but that was the moment when there was no more control running over my wires, no more fight, no more fog or clarity, just the feeling of being hurt. I fell on one knee and made an awful noise. Kung fu is one of the few contexts in which I feel like I can utter awful vocalizations without a breach of social protocol, or making people think that I'm weirder than they already do.
As somebody held my hands up in the air so my diaphragm could properly expand my lungs again, all I could do was grin and say "That was one hell of a hit."
Which it was.
There's a constant stream of sense flowing through every moment. It all has a certain smoothness and synchrony. But pain that stops you is different. It's asynchronous. Everything suddenly halts. Everything else is suddenly interrupted. Computer scientists might call this an exception, meaning the appearance of a condition somehow different than the usual behavior of the machine, and requiring special attention. A program "throws an exception," just like a fist throws a punch. Hopefully, if things are well-written, there is something there to catch it. We're accustomed to walking around, standing, sitting. When something knocks you down, though, you have to do something different.
I really like the phrase "to throw an exception."
"Boy, you really threw him for an exception."
Sometimes it's important that everything stops.
I often think about those moments when we don't get to make choices, no matter how well-prepared or quick or ready we are. We spend so much time worrying about what we should think or what we should do, but sometimes something pushes us aside or pulls us in, and leaves us no choices, nor even any thoughts.
Sometimes things happen.
Very curiously, I observed an mixed-martial arts cage match broadcast on a major network in a prime-time slot. It should be said that this sport produces tremendous athletes and excellent fighters; their effectiveness can't be disputed. Still, something is missing. Two people enter a ring and beat the crap out of one another until one of them can't do it anymore. And then what do you have? What does anyone have? Commercials roll, and everyone changes the channel. Power is a funny thing. To be worthwhile, it has to be used. In being used, it is used up. When it's used up, you're back where you started. The fight I saw went on for what couldn't have been more than 90 seconds. After all the music and the fireworks and the dramatic biographies of the fighters, it came down to one of them taking bad hit on the knock-out point on the jaw, and falling down. And then it was done. There was such a painful look of despair in his eyes as they lifted him up off the floor. He had certainly trained for years to learn his skill, and must have worked for months to develop his physical condition. Then it was over. One won, and the other lost, even though they both did exactly the same thing. It seems strangely like struggling over who gets to be the object, and who gets to be the reflection. The undertaking is just a mirror.
Apparently, the Department of Defense has also finally perfected its electromagnetic pain-ray. The experts on television marched out vivid demonstrations of real people marching forward in real-time only to be suddenly and violently stopped and pushed back by some silent, invisible, pain-inflicting force. Their limbs flailed, they grimaced and gasped in agony. But there was nothing heard, nothing seen. Suddenly, they just stopped, and flailed, and screamed, and tried to get away. It was truly eerie. Everything suddenly stops, and everyone suddenly feels pain. The device was simply called the "Active Denial System." I suppose the reasoning behind the strategy is incredibly logical and succinct: pain deters people. It stops what they're doing.
Today I feel oddly like I am stuck in that moment of no thought and no choice. My actions feel oddly like involuntary flailing in blind sea of burning nerve ends. I am just gasping and making awful noises. They say, "all things are burning," and deep in my heart I believe it.
So, strangely, I feel very alive. You don't see the milliamperes that run over a copper wire, but a lightning bolt blinds everyone who's looking. There are small signals, and then there are huge forces. But the two are not different. Its only our sense of our own scale that separates them.
"You think you're so big."
I don't know what story I'm telling lately, or why, or to who. I only know that it's mine, and I feel unaccountably like telling. It's full of awful noises and unaccounted gestures flailing through the matters of fact, involuntarily, clumsily, with no apparent purpose.
It rained yesterday, so hard that the streets filled up with half-an-inch of water. My shoes were still wet today. One letter on the construction sign posted ahead of the roadwork on State-763 had ceased function and so the sign was flashing, "RAD WORK AHEAD -- SEED LIMIT STRICTLY ENFORCED." My twenty-sixth birthday is in two weeks and two days. I really like cartoons. One of my shoelaces is about to break.
Facts like that. It's almost embarrassing or untoward. But I keep finding myself here.
I'm perplexed at how my thoughts can be filled up with so many large principles and overarching truths but I can still be so perplexed and uncertain about so many things. I used to think that this was simply a temporary phase, a sign of incompleteness, an uncorrected fault. Suddenly I find myself thinking that we're all certain about things, and we're all uncertain about things, and this is just how it will be, no matter how much time passes, or how much I learn. Or how much anyone learns.
Everything is bright and clear, even as the sun goes down. I keep seeing rainbows in the thin clouds going by. I keep thinking of that place outside of thought, or choice, and those sunsets and those rainbows feel vividly, brilliantly akin to being punched in the base of the lungs. There's thoughts to think, and choices to make, but somehow what I'm seeing is outside of all of that.
And I keep thinking, that we must all hurt. And I keep thinking that compassion is only the willingness to feel pain. And I keep thinking that wisdom is only the knowledge of when to stop what you're doing.